Iran-Contra Prosecutor Will Not Charge Reagan

Former President Ronald Reagan has been told by Iran-Contra prosecutors that he is no longer under investigation in connection with the 1986 scandal, an attorney for Reagan said Tuesday night.

The office of independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh “regards President Reagan as simply a witness and not as a subject or target,” Walsh said in a letter sent last Thursday to Reagan’s attorney, Theodore B. Olson.

The phrase “subject or target” means that prosecutors lack evidence to support criminal charges and that Reagan’s activities do not fall within the area that the Iran-Contra grand jury is examining.

The letter, however, leaves open the possibility that Reagan will be called to testify as a witness in the Iran-Contra affair, which darkened his second term in office. It also does not mean that Reagan will ultimately escape criticism from Walsh, who is expected to address Reagan’s role in his final report to Congress on the probe.

A spokeswoman for Walsh, Mary Belcher, refused to comment on the letter or to even confirm that it had been sent.

The Iran-Contra investigation covers the secret arms-for-hostages deal, the diversion of the proceeds to fund the Nicaraguan Contras and the alleged cover-up that followed.

Reagan was the highest of three top government officials whose possible involvement in attempts to obstruct criminal, congressional and special inquiries into the Iran-Contra affair remained under scrutiny by Walsh and his investigators.

The status of the investigation of the other two, former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and then-Vice President George Bush, could not be determined Tuesday. While Shultz is believed to still be a subject of the investigation, there appears to be no activity currently aimed at Bush.

Former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger was indicted in June on charges of obstruction, perjury and making false statements in connection with criminal and congressional investigations of the Iran-Contra affair.

Weinberger has said he was indicted after he refused an offer from prosecutors to plead guilty to a misdemeanor in exchange for his testimony about others. He said he did so because he was unwilling to enter a false plea or give false testimony.

Reagan, Bush, Shultz and Weinberger participated in a Nov. 24, 1986, White House meeting that Walsh’s investigators had suggested was a central element in what they viewed as a systematic cover-up of the secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran.

The Weinberger indictment said that during the meeting, then-Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III told officials that a November, 1985, shipment of Hawk missiles by Israel to Iran, an element of the arms-for-hostages arrangement, could have been illegal.

Meese said Reagan had not been previously aware of the shipment and, as the meeting ended, asked whether anyone knew anything else that had not been disclosed. “No one contradicted Mr. Meese’s incorrect statement concerning President Reagan’s lack of knowledge, although several of those present . . . had contrary information,” the Weinberger indictment said.

In a report filed to Congress early this summer on the status of the investigation, Walsh said he was trying to determine whether “acting individually or in concert,” officials of the Reagan Administration “sought to obstruct official inquiries into the Iran initiative . . . by withholding notes, documents and other information, by lying and by supplying a false account of the 1985 arms sales from Israeli stocks and their replenishment by the United States.”

Walsh, 80, has been under attack from Republicans for the $31.4-million cost and the length of his investigation, which began 5 1/2 years ago.

The special prosecutor’s office since 1986 has been investigating the diversion of profits from secret U.S. arms sales to Iran to aid the Contra rebels in Nicaragua at a time when Congress had banned such assistance.

The arms sale to Iran was in connection with attempts by the U.S. government to gain Iranian help in releasing American hostages held in Lebanon.

Walsh’s office is currently prosecuting former CIA spy chief Clair E. George, who is being tried in federal court on charges that he gave false statements, perjured himself and obstructed congressional inquiries in the early stages of the Iran-Contra affair. His trial is in its second week and is expected to last two more.

The chief witness against him, former CIA official Alan D. Fiers, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts last year.

Another former CIA official, Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, who headed the CIA’s Latin American division, is awaiting trial in connection with the scandal.

IRAN-CONTRA TRIAL: Witness says he did not discuss secret rebel aid with Bush. A4